Chances are Mike Bernstein won't be paying much attention to the first-ever statewide survey of holiday shopping plans that the Siena Research Institute released this week.

Bernstein, owner of Simon's Mens Wear in Schenectady, doesn't believe telephone polls offer much insight into the who, what, where and why of spending in his line of business.

"I think the consumer buys what they feel is the necessity at the time," Bernstein said. "They also follow trends."

Nonetheless, the Retail Council of New York State, which sponsored the survey, believes the results will help store owners better understand and predict buying patterns over the holidays.

Whether ignored or acknowledged, this much is certain: Siena College's polling has come a long way since a survey was mailed 25 years ago to historians and political science professors across the country asking them to rate the U.S. presidents (Franklin D. Roosevelt came out on top).

Today, the consumer confidence survey--one of several polls conducted by the Siena Research Institute--is the only one of its kind in New York. The statewide poll has been done monthly since 1999; a regional poll, which includes the Albany area, has been done quarterly since October 2001.

The results are used by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the state Labor Department and Comptroller's Office and analysts in the state Assembly to help gauge future consumer spending and tax revenues. Newspapers, radio and TV stations across the state publicize the figures.

"The day we release this I will probably do 15 to 20 media interviews," said Douglas Lonnstrom, a statistics professor and director of the research institute.

Jason Bram, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said the survey results are included in the "beige book," a national report published about eight times a year that summarizes economic data across the country. The beige book, so called because of its color, is one of the tools used by the Federal Reserve Board to set interest rates.

"What consumer confidence does in New York state isn't going to have that much bearing on the nation as a whole," Bram said. "But it's useful to know how New York is doing. One of our missions at the New York Fed is to keep our ears tuned into what's going on in our district."

The Conference Board, a business-backed research group in New York City, and the University of Michigan also do consumer confidence surveys in the United States. But Bram said the Siena poll is "particularly useful" because the respondents are polled from one state or region within the state.

"I think it's a reasonably good indicator," Bram said. "It is helpful. I wish more states would do it."

The Siena survey questions are modeled after those used by the University of Michigan, which has been polling consumers since 1947. The telephone calls are made by up to 20 students and adults at a time who work out of a room lined with computer terminals on the ground floor of Hines Hall on the Siena campus. The pollsters are paid $7 to $10 an hour or more, based on experience.

Lonnstrom said it's difficult to pin down exactly how much the college spends on the polling because the expenses are spread across several departments, but he's confident it's not a money-maker. Regardless, he said the free publicity is priceless.

"You couldn't buy this name recognition," he said.

There are 6 million telephone numbers in the Siena computer database. For each poll, a sample of 6,000 is used. From that sample, the pollsters try to reach 620 people who will answer the consumer confidence questions.

The college has a strategy for dealing with households that have grown accustomed to immediately hanging up on pollsters and telemarketers: Instead of relying on computers to make the calls--a process that results in a brief but telltale delay when the phone is answered--Siena pollsters dial each number themselves.

Upstate, it takes about 10 calls to find someone willing to respond. Downstate, the ratio is closer to 20-to-1. Lonnstrom and Carla Prehoda, the poll's director of operations, attributes the difference to various factors, including a greater likelihood of reaching domestic help when calling the New York City area and more wariness of pollsters in general.

The poll results form the basis of an index that's used to express consumer confidence. A retailer or analyst trying to divine some pearl of wisdom from the number can be forgiven if they are unsure what to conclude. For instance, the reports issued by the Siena Research Institute during a five-month period earlier this year had confidence up in January, plummeting in February to a 16-month low, up in March, down again in April (an 18-month low) and up in May.

Consumer confidence, it seems, is very fickle. And, at a time when so many people rely on credit cards to pay their bills, the question arises: Aren't consumers going to spend money regardless of how they feel about the future, even if it means falling further into debt?

Lonnstrom believes that may be so. For instance, even with a big jump in home heating costs and rising interest on variable-rate credit cards, the holiday shopping could boom this season, he said. But, he said spending could drop after consumers get those credit card bills in January.

"If I were a business owner, I wouldn't sit down and say 'I'm going to watch the consumer confidence index and do all my plans based on that,' " Lonnstrom said. "I would use the index as one of the pieces of the puzzle."